My Obsession with the Gnome Building. A Pictorial.
Every day I sit in the same spot in the corporate cafeteria. I eat some kind of grilled chicken thing, I drink my Coke Zero, I read the Metro, text my friends and stare at this building. (You can see in the cut). I'm pretty sure that no one but gnomes would work in this building. And last night after I popped my Ambien, I got really Interwebs obsessed with this building.
Now. Viewing the building from the ground is different. And I keep getting confused as to which building on the ground goes with the gnome set-up seen above. As a result, I'm pretty sure I did research on the wrong building.
So, the Not Gnome Building is known as the Church Green Building according to a little sign on the side of the place. Here's the snippet I found online: Church Green Building - Summer and Bedford Streets*
Following the Great Fire of 1872 the Church Green Building was built on the former site of Charles Bulfinch's New South Church. The design is attributed to architect Jonathan Preston. The building originally housed trade association offices and commercial stores for Boston's important shoe and leather industries.
Additional tidbits: The site originally held the New South Church until 1867. The current building bears resemblance to its predecessor, the Freeman's Bank building designed by W.G Preston which was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1872.
Here's a whole web site about the building: http://www.damrellsfire.com/cgi-bin/galleries.pl?tp=Church%20Green%20Block&op=listph
And here's a blog entry about that Web site listing the inaccuracies: http://bostonhistory.typepad.com/notes_on_the_urban_condit/2006/04/damrells_fire_n.html
A Wiki entry on the Boston fire: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Boston_Fire_of_1872 The Great Boston Fire of 1872 was Boston's largest urban fire and still one of the most costly fire-related property losses in American history. The conflagration began at 7:20 p.m. on November 9, 1872, in the basement of a commercial warehouse at 83-87 Summer Street in Boston, Massachusetts. The fire was finally contained twelve hours later, after it had consumed about 65 acres (263,000 m²) of Boston's downtown, 776 buildings, and much of the financial district and caused $73.5 million in damage.[1] At least twenty people are known to have died in the fire.
Apparently it took place a year after the Chicago fire and was so large that a glow in the sky over the fire was noted in ship's logs off the coast of Maine... and Boston's Fire Chief John Damrell was credited for stopping the fire despite the circumstances. Damrell later used his celebrity to lobby for the adoption of a unified national building code.
From what I can tell from the New York Times account of the fire, the Gnome Building was built post-fire on the site of a row of boarding houses.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9A04E2DA1439EF34BC4952DFB7678389669FDE
And then I FINALLY! found some tidbits on the Gnome Building... now known as the Bedford Building! In a book about Victorian Walking Tours in Boston:
If it's warmer at lunch soon, I'll go outside and snap some updated photos of the building. I just love it.
Now. Viewing the building from the ground is different. And I keep getting confused as to which building on the ground goes with the gnome set-up seen above. As a result, I'm pretty sure I did research on the wrong building.
So, the Not Gnome Building is known as the Church Green Building according to a little sign on the side of the place. Here's the snippet I found online: Church Green Building - Summer and Bedford Streets*
Following the Great Fire of 1872 the Church Green Building was built on the former site of Charles Bulfinch's New South Church. The design is attributed to architect Jonathan Preston. The building originally housed trade association offices and commercial stores for Boston's important shoe and leather industries.
Additional tidbits: The site originally held the New South Church until 1867. The current building bears resemblance to its predecessor, the Freeman's Bank building designed by W.G Preston which was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1872.
Here's a whole web site about the building: http://www.damrellsfire.com/cgi-bin/galleries.pl?tp=Church%20Green%20Block&op=listph
And here's a blog entry about that Web site listing the inaccuracies: http://bostonhistory.typepad.com/notes_on_the_urban_condit/2006/04/damrells_fire_n.html
A Wiki entry on the Boston fire: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Boston_Fire_of_1872 The Great Boston Fire of 1872 was Boston's largest urban fire and still one of the most costly fire-related property losses in American history. The conflagration began at 7:20 p.m. on November 9, 1872, in the basement of a commercial warehouse at 83-87 Summer Street in Boston, Massachusetts. The fire was finally contained twelve hours later, after it had consumed about 65 acres (263,000 m²) of Boston's downtown, 776 buildings, and much of the financial district and caused $73.5 million in damage.[1] At least twenty people are known to have died in the fire.
Apparently it took place a year after the Chicago fire and was so large that a glow in the sky over the fire was noted in ship's logs off the coast of Maine... and Boston's Fire Chief John Damrell was credited for stopping the fire despite the circumstances. Damrell later used his celebrity to lobby for the adoption of a unified national building code.
From what I can tell from the New York Times account of the fire, the Gnome Building was built post-fire on the site of a row of boarding houses.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9A04E2DA1439EF34BC4952DFB7678389669FDE
And then I FINALLY! found some tidbits on the Gnome Building... now known as the Bedford Building! In a book about Victorian Walking Tours in Boston:
If it's warmer at lunch soon, I'll go outside and snap some updated photos of the building. I just love it.